Title: King of Infinite Space 7/7
Authors: seanchai and elspethdixon
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony.
Warnings: Things are getting dark, and there's probably some language.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Summary: A villain from Tony's past comes back to cause trouble for the Avengers. Maybe it wouldn't have been so easy, if thing weren't already so awkward over the events of Execute Program.
And of course, thanks to tavella for the great beta job.
Chapter Seven
He opened his eyes and found himself staring up at a white ceiling, squinting against the glare of Hank's track lighting. Tony frowned; he'd done this before. This time, however, whatever he was lying on was hard and cold rather than soft, and his head was pounding. It felt a lot like being hung-over -- even the general feeling of self-disgust was the same.
There was something beeping in the background, the sound familiar, though he couldn't place it. Tony groaned, reaching up to rub at his forehead, at the spot over his right eye where the pain was sharpest. He paused when his fingers encountered the patches and wires of an EEG machine, and he realized that the beeping was probably a heart monitor.
Heart monitor. Tony closed his eyes again, reaching out with the Extremis, and immediately located the laptop and Hank's Ant-Man helmet. This really was Hank's lab. He was really awake.
"Oh, thank God," Steve's voice breathed, and Tony froze, his eyes still shut. He was awake, wasn't he?
"Steve?" Tony asked. Please don't be Tiberius, he thought. He couldn't do that again.
"How do you feel?" Steve voice was level now, giving away nothing, and Tony rolled his head sideways, opening his eyes to see Steve leaning against the wall beside the door, about ten feet away. He was in his costume, the red and blue vivid against the white paint, but his head was bare.
"Fine," Tony said automatically. "How long was I out?"
"Two hours." Steve was staring intently at him, as if searching for something, but when Tony tried to catch, he dropped his eyes. "When you didn't wake up after Stone went down, we started to get worried. Hank said your nose was bleeding."
"Oh," Tony said articulately. He closed his eyes once more; the fluorescent lights were too bright, humming in tune with his headache. He wasn't sure whether the pain was due to Tiberius's meddling, or if he'd done something to himself when he pulled that stunt with the Extremis. "What happened?"
"After you passed out, we went after Stone. He'd hired the Wrecking Crew to guard his office building, so I don't think there'll be any problem putting him in jail this time."
"Good," Tony muttered. "He set this whole thing up to get back at me. Sorry the rest of you got dragged into it."
"It doesn't matter," Steve said. "The whole thing's come down around his ears now. Peter found specs for Hathart's hate-ray machine on his computer, as well as the details of the pay-off he'd been making to Hathart and the Wrecking Crew. Not to mention the Scorpion and a couple dozen other people."
"That was sloppy," Tony observed. "Ty always did have to work things out on paper first." It had always annoyed Tiberius that Tony preferred to work hands-on, straight from his own head, but the fact that there were no blueprints to the Iron Man armor had proven to be a good thing on more than one occasion.
Then he frowned, realizing that Steve hadn't come any closer since the start of this conversation. Normally, there would have been a hand on his shoulder as Steve bent over him and peered closely at his face, checking that he was really all right. Tony had spent years savoring all of those little touches.
He turned his head toward Steve again, and saw him leaning against the wall in the exact same position he'd been in when Tony had first looked at him. His arms were folded across his chest, and he was still giving Tony that searching look.
He hadn't put much stock in Tiberius's assertions that he'd told Steve all about Tony's feelings for him, or that Steve was disgusted by him, but why was Steve staying on the other side of the room and looking at him so strangely?
Tiberius hadn't been telling the truth, had he? It had sounded like exactly the kind of thing Tiberius would say to try and upset him, of a piece with his statements that Tony would get his team killed, and that people were better off without him.
But the fact remained that Steve hadn't touched him, come near him, or even met his eyes yet. If Tiberius had been lying, then... the last time Tony had really had a conversation with Steve had been that argument about blowing up the hate-ray. An argument during which he had admitted to sleeping with Tiberius, and more or less come out to Steve. He hadn't been thinking clearly, or, in fact, much at all at that point, but in retrospect, maybe that hadn't been the best of ideas.
"Tony," Steve started, very quietly, "are you sure-"
He broke off as the door beside him swung open, and Hank walked into the room.
"See, I told you he'd wake up," he said -- to Steve -- before crossing the room to Tony's side and adding, "Isn't sanity nice?"
"You know," Tony told him, sitting up slowly and cradling his head in his hands, "I don't think I every really appreciated your Ant-Man helmet properly until now."
Hank blinked and glanced at the helmet, frowning. "What are you talking about? I haven't used that in a week."
Tony gave the two of them a somewhat truncated account of what had happened after Tiberius had trapped him in the DreamVision, leaving out the dead bodies, discussions of the harm he'd brought down his friends, and Tiberius taking Steve's shape. "So I patched the Extremis into his DreamVision nanites and gave him a taste of his own medicine."
"That must have been what caused the nosebleed," Hank said. "Please don't do that again. I had Hank McCoy come and take a look at you, and he said that there was nothing seriously wrong with you apart from being unconscious, but those nanites are still inside you, and that's going to be a problem."
The prospect of having nanites designed to control his perceptions permanently lurking in his bloodstream was not a pleasant one. Thank God there was actually something he could do about that. "The Extremis is pretty much my immune system now. Now that I know they're there, I can convince the Extremis to recognize them as a virus and destroy them."
"Good," Steve said. "That's good. Then there won't--" he broke off, then said, "he won't be able to do this to you again."
Tony tried once more to catch Steve's eyes, and once again, Steve looked away.
"Tony! You're awake!" Peter poked his head around the doorframe, the huge white eyes of his mask making him look startled. "And not braindead. Great!" He flashed Tony a thumbs-up, and then flung himself into the room with every sign of enthusiasm. "Cap told you how he kicked Stone's butt, right? We found all kinds of evidence in Stone's computer files. Did you know he was crazy? Like, Norman Osborn crazy. How come rich businessmen always turn out to be crazy supervillains? I mean, not you, obviously, um, 'cause you're not a supervillain."
"Hello, Peter," Tony said dryly. It was nice to see that at least one person's night hadn't been ruined by his brief mental breakdown. He lifted his head from his hands and swung his legs over the side of the lab table, and as he did so, he saw Logan in the doorway behind Peter, one shoulder propped against the doorjamb. The pain in his head, which had faded from ice-pick sharp to a dull ache, gave another heavy throb. "Did you bring the whole team?" he asked Steve. They would all have heard about what had happened anyway; having everyone seeing him unconscious and stuck full of wires probably wouldn't make that much difference in the long run.
"No," Steve said, sounding faintly apologetic. "I-"
"Spidey and I followed him," Logan volunteered. "Cage and Spiderwoman are still back at the tower."
"We need to fill them in on what's happened." Steve frowned slightly. "They're not going to be happy with me for keeping them in the dark."
Tony winced. It was a safe bet that none of the New Avengers were very happy with him right now, given that he'd kept all of them in the dark. Steve especially wasn't, if Tony was right and that comment was actually a subtle dig at him. He'd kept Steve in the dark about more than just the hallucinations, after all, and Steve had never liked being lied to. Probably especially about little details like Tony's sexuality. "Sorry for barging in on you last night," he said to Hank. "You probably could have done without that."
"Don't worry." Hank shrugged. "I probably owe everybody who's been on the Avengers at least one favor when it comes to that sort of thing. I'm sure Jan's going to want you to make it up to her, though. She the one who got stuck talking to the police."
Which explained why she hadn't come in to poke at him yet, Tony reflected. "I'll think of something," he said. "Still, we should probably get out of your way."
"You know you don't have to." Hank eyed him carefully, a slight frown between his brows. "You were out cold for two hours."
"He's right," Steve put in, staring with great intensity at the floor. He rubbed at the back of his neck uncomfortably, adding, "Maybe you should stay here and rest a little longer. The rest of us can take off and you can catch up to us later."
Tony stared down at his hands, letting his shoulders slump. Steve didn't even want to be in the same house with him.
He'd never expected that. Uncomfortableness, maybe, possibly even disapproval, but not that. Still, he couldn't exactly stay away from what was both his home and his place of business just because Steve didn't want Tony near him anymore.
"If I go back to Stark Tower, I can rest in a bed, instead of on a dissection table."
"It's not a dissection table," Hank said primly. "It's where I keep the enclosed environment for the fire ants."
"Even better." Tony climb down from the table, resisted the impulse to check his clothing for insects. Hank, thankfully, was not Scott Lang, and didn't usually let ants roam his house at will.
Steve, Peter, and Logan had apparently taken the subway from downtown, and Tony wasn't entirely sure how he'd gotten from his office to Hank and Jan's house, so they ended up calling a car service to take them home-- technically, Tony could have called someone at SE to come fetch him, but there was no way he was waking Happy Hogan up at five in the morning.
The day did not improve from that point on. Luke and Jessica Drew were, as expected, distinctly displeased at having been left out of the previous evening's excitement. Jessica Jones wasn't thrilled, either, though Tony wasn't sure if it was because Steve had left Luke out of things, or because Peter had found dirt on Tiberius that she hadn't been able to dig up.
By lunchtime, Tony had developed a low-grade fever as the Extremis began ridding his body of the nanites, treating them the way it would a viral infection. By one o' clock, footage of Tiberius being taken into a police station to be booked was all over the news, Tiberius ranting loudly that it was all Tony's fault, laughing maniacally as he shouted that he was going to make both Iron Man and the Avengers pay, that he'd make all the superheroes pay. After everything that had happened, it was obvious that Tiberius had never been mentally stable, but now he had clearly gone totally over the edge.
The laughter had an eerily vacant sound that made something inside Tony twist painfully. The Tiberius who had been his friend was obviously completely gone now. Ty had been the first person he'd ever kissed, the one who'd held him the night his parents died, letting Tony cry on his shoulder until he fell asleep in the other man's arms. Tiberius hadn't been that out of control when they'd been talking in the DreamVision; what Tony had done with the Extremis must have been the final straw.
First he'd taken away Tiberius's ability to walk, and now he'd taken his sanity, probably for good. Even if all of their friendship had been a lie, that was a horrible thing to do to someone.
Worst of all, Steve had continued to avoid him, staying at least six feet away from him any time they happened to be in the same room and carefully avoiding his eyes. By evening, Tony was reduced to hiding in his workshop, where he wouldn't have to watch Steve doing an awkward dance to stay on the outside of the invisible circle he seemed to have drawn around Tony.
Four more hours, and the armor would be out of its twenty-four-hour lockdown. Maybe then he would finally stop feeling so shaky. His headache had lessened, but was still present, and had been joined by the full body ache and chill of fever. He was exhausted, probably because he hadn't gotten more than two hours of sleep last night, and those had hardly been restful, since he'd been passed out cold and hooked up to machines.
He wanted his armor back, wanted to take back those hasty words to Steve he'd said out on the balcony, wanted to put his head down on a lab bench and sleep, but he was going to have to wait another four hours for the armor, and there was no way to take back what he'd admitted to. And he was afraid of what he might see if closed his eyes.
Steve had wanted to believe that Stone had been lying when he'd implied that he'd had sex with Tony in the DreamVision as Steve. Unfortunately, that was beginning to seem less and less likely. The more time he'd spent around Tony today, the more upset the other man had seemed, even though Steve had been careful to stay at a non-threatening distance.
Since Tony had woken up in Hank's lab, Steve hadn't been able to bring himself to meet his eyes. He didn't want to know what had happened inside Tony's head, wanted to be able to ignore it until it all went away. But that wasn't going to help Tony.
Tony already kept too many things to himself. For God's sake, he's spent the past couple of weeks thinking he was going crazy, and hadn't asked anyone for help!
Over the years, whenever Steve had been upset about something, Tony had eventually come to him and dragged it out of him, whether he wanted to talk about it or not. It usually helped. There was no way Tony would talk about something like this of his own free will, but what Tiberius had done to him was obviously getting to him. Tony had never dealt well with losing control, either of himself, his technology, or a situation, and something like this was about as big a loss of control as you could experience.
Tony had avoided eating dinner, and was now hiding down in his lab, like an animal retreating to its den to lick its wounds. Jarvis had actually come to Steve and asked him to go convince Tony to come upstairs and go to bed before he fell over, which meant that Steve couldn't put things off any longer.
And as much as he dreaded the answer, Steve needed to know exactly what Tiberius had done.
He found Tony sitting at one of the workbenches, his shoulders slumped as if he couldn't summon up the energy to sit up straight. There were a couple of quinjet diagrams spread out in front of him, but he was staring off into space blankly, apparently oblivious to them.
Steve walked around to the other side of the workbench, into Tony's line of vision. Tony didn't react.
"Tony?" Steve asked softly, not sure how to start.
Tony blinked; it took a moment for him to focus on Steve, as if he were coming back from somewhere very far away. "Steve," he said dully, then looked away, down at the diagrams.
"Are you all right?" Stupid question, since obviously the answer was "no."
"I'm fine," Tony said, still staring at the diagrams. His voice was still flat, empty of emotion.
As he'd expected, Tony obviously wasn't going to volunteer any information. He steeled himself inwardly and began, "When I cornered him, Stone, ah... he told me some of what he did to you." Deep breath, Steve, he told himself. You can say this. "He didn't... hurt you, did he?" Okay, he couldn't say it.
Tony shrugged, looking away. "Mostly he gave me nightmares about dead people."
"Oh," Steve said. That sounded fairly innocuous, but going by the way Tony looked right now -- unshaven, hollow eyed, with that slump in his shoulders that Steve associated with catastrophically failed mission or the consumption of large amounts of alcohol -- he was betting it had been anything but.
"Ty's never been very subtle," Tony went on, still in that dull, defeated tone. "I'm just glad to know it was him; I was starting to think I might be going crazy."
Oh yes, Steve knew all about those kinds of nightmares about dead people. The ones where you were back in 1945, in the Ardennes, identifying the corpses of men you'd spoken to only days ago, now frozen to the ground by their own blood, and looked down to find that the next mutilated body was Bucky's. And then you woke up, and couldn't even take comfort in telling yourself that the dreams weren't true, because the details might be wrong, but the most important part was all too real. "Why didn't you come to me?" he asked. "I have some experience with that kind of dream."
Another shrug. "I didn't want to bother you." He glanced up at Steve, a little, self-deprecating smile playing over his lips. "Especially not after what happened with the armor. If I was being controlled again..." he trailed off, shaking his head slightly. "How could I let you down like that again?" He wasn't emotionless now; Steve could hear the anguish in his tone as he asked the question, voice catching, harsh, like a man walking on broken glass.
"Let you..." Steve choked out, throat suddenly tight. "Tony, if anything, I've let you down. This is the second time you've been under mind-control since we started this team, and I didn't notice either time. I'm sorry I let this happen to you." He reached out instinctively to lay a hand on Tony's shoulder, but caught himself just in time and stopped short, hand freezing in midair before falling back to his side. "And I'm so, so sorry Stone used me to hurt you."
Tony stared at him, meeting his eyes for the first time in far too long. He frowned slightly, and then his eyes widened, and Steve could almost see the pieces falling into place in his head. He drew in a long breath, dropping his gaze back down to his hands, and said, very quietly, "When Ty had me under, he kissed me, and tried to make me think that he was you."
Steve buried his face in his hands, filled with horrified misery. It hadn't been a lie. "Oh, God, I'm-"
"Steve," Tony interrupted, voice very gentle, "that's all he did."
Steve sagged with relief, suddenly realizing just how heavily the thought of someone with his face taking advantage of Tony had weighed on his mind. He'd dreaded it, hated it, he'd known that, but now that he knew it wasn't as terrible as he'd feared, his knees felt weak, and the thought crossed his mind that maybe he should sit down.
Steve stopped hiding behind his hands and looked back up at Tony, who was regarding him with a strangely gentle expression.
"I knew it wasn't you almost immediately," he said. "I just..."
"What?" Steve asked, after several seconds had elapsed in silence.
Tony sighed. "Look, whatever Ty told you about me, it's not like that. But I," he looked down again, shoulders slumping once more, and Steve realized that Tony was about to try and reassure him by saying that he didn't feel anything for Steve but friendship. Even after all of this, the thought still stung.
"I wanted it to be real," Tony said, so quietly that Steve could barely hear him, and surely he'd heard wrong?
"I've imagined it so many time," Tony went on, still barely audible, still staring at his hands, "and Ty took that and used it... I'm an idiot. I deserved what I got." He fell silent, still staring at his hands, body utterly motionless.
He looked so completely despondent; Steve couldn't stand by and watch him hurt like that and do nothing. Feeling as if he were moving underwater, he circled the bench to stand beside Tony.
He was oddly aware of little details -- the roughness of Tony's goatee under his fingers as he cupped Tony's jaw in one hand, tilting his chin so that he was looking up at Steve; the warmth of Tony's skin; the slate-blue of his eyes and the thick, dark lashed that framed them.
He leaned down and brushed his lips lightly against Tony's. It was barely a kiss, but it felt like more than that, like he was laying himself completely open to Tony, desires, feelings, everything. Everything he had never said.
"That was real," Steve said, barely above a whisper, as he pulled back.
Tony stared up at him, wide-eyed, utter amazement on his face, and Steve had a moment to wonder if he'd made some terrible mistake before Tony stood, eyes never leaving Steve's face, slid his fingers into Steve's hair, and molded himself against him, kissing him hard. There was an odd tinge of desperation to it.
Steve wrapped his arms around Tony, closing his eyes, and moaned low in his throat as Tony ground himself against him, wrapping a fist around Steve's belt and slipping one hand up under his shirt. Then he remembered that Tony had been through substantial amounts of emotional trauma last night, hadn't slept in about twenty-four hours, and had been molested by a supervillain who'd made himself look like Steve. Considering all of that, maybe doing this wasn't the best idea right now, no matter how much either of them wanted it.
Regretfully, he turned his face away, breaking the kiss. "Tony."
Tony pressed a kiss to the corner of his jaw, then another to the side of Steve's throat, and Steve said, more firmly this time,
"Tony. Maybe we shouldn't do this right now."
Tony pulled away, letting go of Steve. He blinked at Steve dazedly, looking baffled. "Why?"
"You've been through an awful lot today," Steve said, stumbling awkwardly over the words, "and, um-"
"Oh," Tony said, almost visibly deflating. "I... right." He took a small step back from Steve, and Steve could almost see him composing his expression. "You didn't have to do that, just because I..."
And Steve realized with a jolt that Tony actually thought that Steve was rejecting him somehow, or had only kissed him out of pity, or -- Steve wasn't really sure exactly how Tony's mind was working at the moment. "No, no, I wanted to. Want to. A lot. Trust me."
Tony looked unconvinced.
"What kind of a martyr do you think I am?" the words just burst out, more sarcastic then he'd meant to sound, and he rushed on, adding, "I've wanted you for years. You're so passionate, and dedicated, and you introduced me to Tolkien, and... when I was completely alone and didn't have anything, you gave me a place to stay and a purpose." He would have been completely loft and adrift, fifty years away from where he belonged, if the Avengers hadn't taken him in, and Iron Man had been the first one to really be a friend rather than just a teammate. "And I couldn't stand it that Tiberius Stone got to have more of you than I did, when all he ever did was try to hurt you. Last month, when I thought you were dying... I want to," he finished lamely. "I do. Just not right now."
Tony was smiling now, a small, intimate smile. "I didn't know you felt that strongly about the Lord of the Rings." He sighed, though he didn't stop smiling. "You're probably right."
"Not to mention that Jarvis sent me down here to make you go to bed, and I don't think that's the sort of going to bed he had in mind," Steve said, returning Tony's smile. He could wait a few days, until Tony looked less haggard and shaken up. The fact that Tony was here, and all right (mostly), and smiling at Steve like he belonged to Steve; that was the important part.
"I was sort of trying to avoid that," Tony said, looking faintly embarrassed. "Sleep hasn't been much fun lately, and my armor is still off line."
He had to be exhausted, Steve reflected, because he wasn't usually so obvious about how much safer he felt with the armor on or close by. "I thought Stone's nanites were gone," he said.
"Mostly," Tony agreed, "but it's not as if any of us need nanites in order to have a bad night's sleep, at this point." He closed his eyes, rubbing at his forehead with one hand. "I just... Would you mind staying the night? Just to sleep."
Steve flashed to the sight of Tony lying motionless on Hank's lab table, hooked up to machines that would tell them if anything went wrong with his brain or his heart, but wouldn't enable them to do anything about it. Tony wasn't the only one who was going to have nightmares about this. "I wouldn't mind at all."
The End
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